Isaac interviews this 23 year old Vancouver to NYC transplant who does some brilliant drawings.
Time, care and detail are the first things that come to mind when looking at Ms. Schmidt's work. It's as every crevice of one of her pieces is filled with something for the eye. Painstaking attention to every detail is spelled out in each of her lines. From the anatomy of the common housefly to the fanciful tail feathers in Peacock the images look as if a slight breath would fracture the serenity of their moment. While fancy is one aspect of her work realism plays an equally important part.

After seeing her work on Tim Barber's Tiny Vices I became an instant fan. After doing a little internet research and poking around in her FBI file I contacted her and conducted the following interview. I hope a gallery in the Bay Area brings her out here at some point. Because I have a feeling that her work is even more impressive in the flesh.
- Isaac McKay-Randozzi

Lets start with the basics; what's your full name, where do you live, and how old are you?
Aurel Schmidt, New York, 23

Have you lived there a long time?
I have been in New York for a year, but I live out of a suitcase, so I wouldn't say that I really live anywhere, I more live where-ever.

Medium:
Pencil crayon, pencil and acrylic on paper. Ranging in size from 15"X15" to around 40"X60". "The end" is 4ft X4ft acrylic on wood panel. Most of the insects are drawn life size or slightly larger.

How long have you been doing arty type things?
As long as I can remember. When I was a teenager I was making very angsty detailed drawings on all sorts of wonderful satanic themes. I drew everyday, I loved it so much. Then I got really embarrassed of them, I hid them all under the bed at my mothers house. Now I have come full circle, I draw rotting corpses all day, I have never been happier.

How do you make a living?
It's a secret.

Betting on snail racing?
Not even close.

How much of your income comes from your trucker hat business?
I gave that up a long time ago.

Why did you move from Canada to NYC?
I was living a really charmed life in Vancouver. Everything was perfect. I needed to make life more difficult. I wanted a challenge, to try new things, meet new people.

Why New York?
It was the only place I knew anyone else. I also wanted to be around museums and galleries, until I moved here I had never seen a 'masterpiece' in real life. Needless to say, the first time I went to the Met it really blew my mind. It changed everything.

Is your work all hand done? Or do you use any computer tools to help out?
It is all "hand done." When you see them in real life it is pretty obvious.

Do you smoke weed? I only ask because your work has a stonerish quality to it.
I don't smoke weed. But if you want to you can.

Depending on the size, how long does each piece take?
The zombie drawings take a long time. Days, Months... I've never timed it.

Do you paint? Or is your main focus drawing?
Drawing is my first love, but I would never be content to do one thing, I love ideas too much. I like to make ideas not pictures, any form will do. The zombie series that I am working on now will be drawing, sculpture, and some appropriation photography. I am about to embark on this really intense sculpture project over the summer. I am going out into the bush for four months, I am going to build my own kiln, and kill snakes and mice and insects and cast them. Zombie sculptures. Like the drawings but made of wax, or ceramic or something, I don't even know yet! I know what they look like in my mind, but I don't know how to make them yet.

What's the biggest mistake you've ever made?
I love mistakes. You make a mistake and as you try to repair the damage you create something new.
Your ego is always trying to gloss things over, project an idea of what you want to make, who you want to be. When you fuck up you get a chance to see through it. Those moments are golden. Through mistakes you are able to short-circuit the ego long enough do something actually interesting. Everything good I have ever made came from a mistake.

What was the best decision you ever made?
Putting all my eggs in one basket.

What's your favorite 4-letter word?
L-
O-
V-
E

Does God exist, if so is she pissed?
I don't believe in god. But I see what you are getting at. I think the world is horrific. It always has been. And I don't mean just the everyday war rape and pillage child molesting alienating living hell that is existence. I mean the the fact that we are missing the end of the novel, we live everyday hurdling full speed towards a brick wall, and have no fucking clue what will happen after we hit. Its terrifying, but I love it I love life more then life.

For a 23 year old you seem to be fairly mature, is that because you're a woman, or how you were raised, something else?
well... I suppose I put myself through a lot of trials. Always jumping out of the frying pan. Making grandiose and often poorly planner decisions and then seeing them through. I had little to no discipline growing up. Landmines. I got in to a lot of trouble. With no one to tell me what I should or shouldn't do I decided how I wanted to live my life on my own terms. As I mentioned above, mistakes. Living in hell and coming out the other side, a better person, subsequently an older person. Honestly though I am so thankful to be getting older. Fuck being a kid, at least as an adult you fully understand free will.

Do you do many art shows?
Recently Tim Barber has had two shows in New York of artists on his website: tinyvices.com, and I showed/am showing a few drawings in them, Right now: '25 Bold Moves' at the House of Campari, 382 West Broadway, May 5th through May 21st 2006, and last month at Spencer Brownstone Gallery. Otherwise, in Vancouver at artist run spaces, Antisocial, the Crying Room.

Where do you want to go with your art? Make a living off of it? Or just do it to do it?
I will always do it, I love it more then anything. I want to show it when I like it. If I sell it means that person liked it enough to buy it, and I like that.

Where can people see your work online? Have you been published?tinyvices.com

We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...

If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.

Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.

Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.

Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.

Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.

San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.

Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.

Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.

The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.

With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding

I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle

Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.

Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.

For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.

I'm not sure how many people are lucky enough to have The San Francisco Giants 3 World Series trophies put on display at their work for the company's employees to enjoy during their lunch break, but that's what happened the other day at Deluxe. So great.

When works of art become commodities and nothing else, when every endeavor becomes “creative” and everybody “a creative,” then art sinks back to craft and artists back to artisans—a word that, in its adjectival form, at least, is newly popular again. Artisanal pickles, artisanal poems: what’s the difference, after all? So “art” itself may disappear: art as Art, that old high thing. Which—unless, like me, you think we need a vessel for our inner life—is nothing much to mourn.

Hard-working artisan, solitary genius, credentialed professional—the image of the artist has changed radically over the centuries. What if the latest model to emerge means the end of art as we have known it? --continue reading

"[Satire] is important because it brings out the flaws we all have and throws them up on the screen of another person," said Turner. “How they react sort of shows how important that really is.” Later, he added, "Charlie took a hit for everybody." -read on

NYC --- A new graffiti abatement program put forth by the police commissioner has beat cops carrying cans of spray paint to fill in and cover graffiti artists work in an effort to clean up the city --> Many cops are thinking it's a waste of resources, but we're waiting to see someone make a project of it. Maybe instructions for the cops on where to fill-in?

The NYPD is arming its cops with cans of spray paint and giving them art-class-style lessons to tackle the scourge of urban graffiti, The Post has learned.

Shootings are on the rise across the city, but the directive from Police Headquarters is to hunt down street art and cover it with black, red and white spray paint, sources said... READ ON

SAN FRANCISCO --- The Headlands Center for the Arts is preparing for their largest fundraiser of the year set to go down on June 4th at SOMArts here in the city. Art auction, food, drinks, live music, etc and all for helping to support a great institution up in the Marin Headlands. ~details

ABOUT HEADLANDSHeadlands Center for the Arts provides an unparalleled environment for the creative process and the development of new work and ideas. Through a range of programs for artists and the public, we offer opportunities for reflection, dialogue, and exchange that build understanding and appreciation for the role of art in society.

We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...

If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.

Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.

Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.

Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.

Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.

San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.

Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.

Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.

The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.

With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding

I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle

Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.

Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.

For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.

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